Generally, clothing has been means for protecting human bodies from external environments and, in modern days, has become means of fashion for expressing oneself to others. Recently, functional clothing having insulation, waterproofing, antifouling, antibacterial, flame retardant, and other advantageous properties, in addition to being means of fashion, is drawing attention. To manufacture such clothing, special processing is performed on fabrics.
As an example, fabric having insulation functionality is permeated with aerogel, which is used as an insulation material due to its very low thermal conductivity. The aerogel, made of silicon oxide (SiO2), has been recognized as a novel material, which has drawn attention, since its discovery in the 1930s, as an insulation material, an impact absorbing material, and a soundproofing material, etc. as it is resistant to heat, electricity, sound, and impact, etc., and is only three times as heavy as air of the same volume. Further, aerogel is formed of silicon oxide threads having a diameter of one ten-thousandth of human hair, tangled extremely sparsely, and air molecules occupy the space between threads, and air accounts for 98% of the total volume.
A system and method of processing fabric using aerogel as a wetting agent is disclosed in Korean Patent No. 01255631, which was granted from a patent application filed by the present applicant. In short, the patented system includes a mixture supply part, a non-woven fabric supply roll, an insulation processing and transporting part permeating a mixture into a non-woven fabric using a blade, a drying part, and an insulation padding collecting roll.